The Raven

I violently threw my goblet of juice against a wall in the common room while standing up. “I DON’T BLOODY KNOW WHAT HAPPENED, MALFOY. WHY ARE YOU SO BLOODY CURIOUS OVER THINGS THAT DON’T EVEN CONCERN YOU?”

He babbled a bit, but I walked away from the pathetic group who think me their friend and left for my bed. I don’t know what she did to me, or even how she did it. I don’t know why she had to do it in front of the class; I don’t know why I woke up in chunks of Devil’s Snare, either. Is that the cure for my new curse? This is the worst day to date. I’ve been made a fool, I almost died, I’m incredibly confused, and the only people who will talk to me offer no insight whatsoever. To add to the discomfort of my day, my bed had someone who is not I in it.

But then I saw it was she. Nyathera looked at me through half-opened eyes and slowly drew in a deep breath. I gulped and surprisingly timidly asked, “What are you doing in here, in my bed?”

She sat up and hunched a bit before yawning, then she looked me right in the eye. “You failed to learn about me for Binns’ class—”

I through my hands up and ran them through my hair, “Well you did a bloody good job providing a show.”

She smirked and continued as if I didn’t interrupt her, “Not due to a lack of effort, but to a lack of understanding.”

I sighed, leaned against the wall, and took her bait. “What is it that I do not understand?”

She moved to the edge of my bed, made a motion as if she was going to lightly jump off, but then froze in position. I could barely hear her whisper, “It’s not me you need to figure out, Tom,” Then she looked at me as if she were possessed, “It’s the curse I am forced to bear.”

I didn’t respond, I couldn’t; I stared at her while she gently jumped off the edge of my bed and landed softly on her delicate yet strong feet. She walked over to me, took my wand out of my pocket and forced me to hold it in my right hand. She wrapped both of her hands around my wand hand and pressed the tip of my wand against the skin and bone that separates the outside world from her heart.

I gulped and quietly whispered, “Wh—what do you want from me, Nyathera?” I couldn’t believe I stuttered, but she seemed to either not notice or not care.

She closed her eyes with so much apathetic relaxation that it almost felt sensual, especially coupled with the shiver caused by her whisper.

I asked her to repeat herself.

She immediately opened her eyes and stared into mine, “Avada Kedavra me.”

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t find any words.

She pressed her body as close to mine as possible while still having my wand pressed into her skin. “Don’t tell me you’re not capable.” She stood on her tiptoes, bent her head back and whispered against the beginnings of my jaw, just to the right of my chin, “We both know that you’ve done it before.”

An uncontrolled, short-lived spasm shook my whole body for a good two seconds before I stared into her foggy eyes, “Why?”

She smiled. She smiled a real smile. She smiled the smile one smiles when they know it to be their last.

It was chilling.

It was sexy.

But, most of all, it was confident.

She didn’t want to waste any more time with silence, so she whispered, “You’ve become so skilled with it that you don’t even need to be feeling angry when you do it. You don’t even need to call upon your rage; it just flows. So let it flow, Tommy,” She pressed her lips against my jaw line, “Let it flow.”

I became a mindless puppet, completely unaware of everything, everything except for her soft, oddly cold lips against my sharp, warm jaw. “Avada Kedavra.”

The dirty green light exploded out of my wand with the kind of force that could have destroyed a whole room, but it didn’t even knock her back. She actually took a step back from me with her hands on her hips and a sickened laugh wisping out of her mouth. A hole, it’s inner ring completely burnt, was in the fabric of her blue, turtle neck sweater dress, revealing a little of the sun kissed flesh of her breasts. She sighed, shrugged, then said, “You see, Tommy-Bear—”

“My—”

She kept talking, completely disregarding my interruption; “I’m a living, breathing paradox. I’m the complete personification of life. I cannot be permanently injured. I can’t die, either. Perhaps one day from natural causes, but for now, it seems that I am immortal.”

My jaw dropped and I accidentally spat on my sweater.

“My family died in a fire when I was twelve. Our house was set ablaze by some demented follower of Grindelwald.” She sat at the foot of my bed and stared up at the ceiling, “My parents were too intelligent for these times and they were definitely more courageous than this time can handle. So they killed my parents. They killed my younger sister and my older brother.” Her voice suddenly became higher, “I watched as they burned to death. They screamed. They tried to break out of the house, but no magic or physical force could do anything. I watched them burn. I tried to create a strong, continuous stream of water from my wand, I tried to lie on them to put the fire out, but Fiend Fire is an evil, uncontrollable thing.” She looked back into my eyes, “My skin burned, peeled, healed and burned again over and over until everything was ashes. Everything but me.”

I leaned against the wall behind me again and managed to whisper, “I thought their portraits were in the trophy room because they did something noble, something honor-worthy for the school.”

She just looked at me.

“I thought you smoked and ditched because you didn’t care enough to reach their greatness.”

She hopped off my bed and pressed herself gently, yet assertively, against me. “I didn’t watch a fire consume my family, I watched my family burn into ashes. Everyone thinks that I have a gift. I have a curse. Someone upstairs either has plans so big and difficult for me that the horrors I saw prepare me for something, or God isn’t all that kind and has seriously morbid humor.”

I breathed out with amusement and smiled crookedly.

She brought her soft hands up to my pale face and cradled my face. She then slowly tilted my head down before whispering again, the same sensual whisper from before. “You see, Tommy-Bear, I’m not suicidal. I do not wish to kill myself,” She slid her hands down my neck, across my shoulders, down my arms and onto my hands. She placed my hands, one on top of the other, on the flesh protecting her heart, “but I also don’t really want to live.”

My hands tickled with warm; we both looked down to see my magic acting on its own and fixing the hole in her sweater dress. We looked into each other’s eyes at the same time and words flew out quietly from between my warm lips, “I don’t want to kill you.”

She nodded.

My voice was dry and scratchy as I concluded, “I won’t kill you.”

She smirked and said, “You couldn’t anyway.” Then she walked away from me the second her dress was fixed, but she stopped at the door and looked at me.

I gulped, “There are some angry chaps out there that you’ll have to pass.”
She didn’t respond, she just left, and I just watched her walk away. I watched Nyathera walk out on me in all the glory of her sun kissed skin, yet cold lips and hands. In all the magnificence of her shapely legs, her small waist, her balanced bust, her short frame. Her elegantly sloppy hair, the dragon’s fire tattooed on the back of her neck, do doubt coming from a dragon tattoo that covers her back.

I suddenly looked down. Not out of shame, but to see if any of the golden honey that coats her voice dripped upon the floor of my dormitory or anywhere in the hall. Malfoy and one of his goons walked down the hall next to her and smirked at me, but I was too busy looking for the honey to pay them any response.